home decor

Decorating can be difficult when you don’t have a large budget. Where do you start? How do you make all those pieces you’ve collected along the way work together? Here’s how I took a bunch of mismatched second-hand furniture and pulled the decor together to give myself a brand new, stylish dining room.

Graphic designs are hot! They can be used to dress up furniture using a fairly simple technique. In this case, I added a vintage wine crate design to the top of a stepladder. It’s super easy to do all you need is a print out of the design, pencils and permanent markers. Check it out!

Paint by number art is iconic in its own kitschy way, but it’s also a tool that we can use to paint large images to large art boards or directly to walls to create a mural. We have a thing for vintage Volkswagens, so we found an image online that we liked, changed it up to our satisfaction, and then created a large piece of art for our daughter’s bedroom.

Find Your Donor Image

Search the internet, or elsewhere, for an image that you’d like to reproduce, or at least use as your starting point. Paint by number works best with fairly simple images that don’t have huge variations in color, or shading. Be respectful of other artist’s work and request permission to reproduce if you select a piece of copyrighted art.

Art Board or Wall?

We chose to use 1/8” tempered hardboard for our paint by number art piece rather than painting directly on the wall. We made this decision not because we were squeamish of painting on the wall, but because the hardboard panel is portable. If we decide we want to move the painting, we simply take it off of the wall and move it to its new location. Plus we can paint anywhere we want versus having to stand in our daughter’s bedroom to finish the piece. Hardboard is inexpensive and easily accessible at most hardware stores and home centers.

Until recently I used our daughter’s old bedroom suite as my, pretty much everything room. Our Ladies’ Parlor was rarely used, so I decided to turn it into my own home office. I left all but my desk, computers, TV and photo storage boxes upstairs.

Choosing the Right Bookshelves

The three styles pictured represent the basics found in most online or brick and mortar stores.

The budget friendly flat packed particle board units found in department stores. Take note that these do not hold much weight. Watch for an upcoming article on how to dress them up.

Real wood bookcases. Most are constructed of a combination of solid and real wood veneer over plywood. The quarter inch thick plywood can hold the most weight per shelf. You can also find this style unfinished.

Modern Industrial. These have a combination of metal and wood or wood products. Most shelves are real wood veneer over MDF, so they will not hold as much per shelf as the plywood, but more than particle board units.

I’m a big fan of Stars, but including decor and art from the movies into my house has not always been easy. My wife would prefer that I don’t just hang posters and turn our home into a bachelor pad, which is fair. Also, most the decorations came from the same mold and did not inspire much creativity. Etsy is the silver bullet to my Star Wars decor conundrum. Their shops have loads of creative projects that fit seamlessly into regular decor. Here are few of my favorites:

Upcycled Record Clock

Records are a perfect compliment to the timeless movies as they create their own nostalgic effect. ReSpinIt has made it their mission breathe life back into records in several different forms, including this silhouette clock.

I love sewing. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s in my blood. When sewing for profit, I found ways to get the look my clients wanted, without taking the extra time they often took. This not only saved them money, but it saved me time. Anyone that’s worked for themselves, knows how important that is.

The Pillow:

My first client was a Grandma-to-be for the first time. Her daughter was expecting twin girls. I was sewing everything for their nursery except the sheets. Included was two decorative pillows. Grandma wanted each pillow cover to be washable and have large welting. For easy removal I made them in the popular envelope style where the back opens via overlapped sections.

Follow along and you’ll see my version of making welted pillows. They are easy to make and save you time too.